Goes to town

Piers Lane (piano)

Piers Lane gambols delightfully through the twentieth century in this album of encores, party pieces and a few pianophile rarities, ranging from Dame Myra Hess’s unforgettable arrangement of Bach’s Jesu, joy of man’s desiring to Dudley Moore’s equally unforgettable Beethoven pastiche.

This album includes first recordings of, among others, John Ireland’s Ballerina and Mark Saya’s Offenbach/Chopin conflation Barcarolles. A number of these pieces are by Australian composers who wrote for Piers himself. His unbounded virtuosity and joy in the music is clearly an inspiration, and is evident throughout the recording.

Bach, J S:
 Jesu, bleibet meine Freude (from Cantata BWV147 'Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben')

Benjamin, A:
 Jamaican Rumba

Confrey:
 Dizzy Fingers

Delibes:
 Naila: Waltz

Doheny:
 Toccata for Piers Lane

Grainger:
 Irish Tune from County Derry 'Danny Boy'

Hopkins, Antony:
 Variations on a well-known theme

Ireland:
 Ballerina

Karg-Elert:
 Arabesque No. 1 in G flat major 'Filigran', Op. 5

Keane, R:
 The Tiger Tango (Movement 3 of Save the Animals Suite)

Lane, A:
 Toccata (Movement 4 of Suite)

Mayerl:
 Marigold

Moore, Dudley:
 Beethoven Parody 'And the same to you'

Parker, K:
 Down Longford Way

Poulenc:
 Nocturne No. 4 in C minor 'Bal fantôme'

Rachmaninov:
 Daisies, Op. 38 No. 3

Saya:
 Barcarolles

Sherwin, M:
 A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square

Templeton:
 Bach goes to Town

"Lane in wonderful debonair mode here, sparkling through a personal encore selection from Jamaican Rumba to a Toccata by his own father, and from Myra Hess to Dudley Moore."
BBC Music Magazine - November 2013 *****